This blog post is written by Martin Keegan and Velichka Dimitrova.

On Saturday, May 25, a team of economists and programming experts gathered to plan a format for the saving of regression results in economics. The project would allow for the building of a database of empirical results, where queries would be made, allowing to answer questions like: do authors tend to get more significant results when using World Bank data instead of Penn World Table data and how conclusions about the relationships of variables have evolved over time.

Based on some ideas outlined by the Working Group last year, we worked on a post-publication version of a small system where an informed researcher would be able to enter regression results, which would be saved in a database and then these results would be queried by a researcher who wants to analyse the empirical literature.

We took an approach which turned out to be fairly similar to Guo’s recommendation: create a JSON schema capturing the basics of a regression result (the dependent variable, the goodness of fit, the sample size, standard errors and effect sizes of results), and then make tools which produce and consume data in this format.

So far, we have a tool which generates Metametrik format data, and a tool which reads this into a database. What’s needed next is web UIs that produce this data (for articles already published) and allow you to search it.

Get updates on Metametrik by signing to the mailing list, follow Open Economics and Martin Keegan on Twitter. To comment on the relationship diagramme see schema.